January 30th 2024.
Fionnghuala Maguire's once tanned and confident face is now covered in angry red splotches, a result of her years-long addiction to tanning. At the age of 14, she started using sunbeds and eventually became so obsessed that she would use them every day without any SPF protection. Even after her mother was diagnosed with skin cancer and pleaded for her to stop, Fionnghuala couldn't give up her addiction.
In 2020, Fionnghuala's life was turned upside down when she found a suspicious mole on her skin, which was later confirmed to be cancerous. She underwent immunotherapy treatment and although it was successful, she found herself back in the hospital in 2021 with another cancerous mole. Now, she receives laser therapy every six to eight weeks to help heal the broken capillaries on her skin, a side effect of the immunotherapy that leaves her face covered in red blotches.
Fionnghuala, a receptionist from Belfast, shares that tanning gave her a lot of confidence and she would use sunbeds religiously before a night out or a holiday. In the winter, she would use them two to three times a week, but in the summer, she would ramp it up. She estimates that she has used sunbeds thousands of times in her life, admitting that it was an addiction.
Even after her mother's skin cancer diagnosis and surgeries, Fionnghuala didn't listen and thought she was invincible. However, in December 2021, she felt like she was going to die and her sister had to rush her to the hospital. Due to COVID restrictions, her sister could only drop her off, leaving Fionnghuala fearing that she might never see her again.
At the hospital, doctors discovered that her adrenal glands had stopped working and she was immediately given steroids. Fionnghuala shares that if her levels had remained low for another day or two, she could have gone into a coma and passed away. Now, she lives in constant fear of another cancerous mole appearing on her skin.
Fionnghuala regrets her tanning addiction and says that a tan is not worth the consequences she has faced. She is now "pale white" and unrecognizable from her previously tanned self, all for wanting tanned skin that she could have easily achieved with a bottle of self-tanner. She is angry at herself for putting her life at risk and leaving her son without a mother twice. Fionnghuala's message is clear - the desire for a tan is not worth the potential consequences and she hopes her story will serve as a warning to others.
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